Friday, five o'clock. I'm leaving the office in a hurry to beat rush-hour traffic. No sooner than I'm happily heading toward the parking garage gate, then I feel a funny, frumpy thumpity-thump roll on the right side. Pulling over across two handicapped spots just inside and to the right of the gate, I hop out to confirm that yes, it is in fact what I feared it'd be: flat tire.
My name is Sunset, and I am a Klatarismenophobiac.
I admit it, I think about flat tires all the time. Every time I buckle into my car, every time I snap into my bike... That I'm not fully prepared in case of being stranded with a flat! Even when I'm in other people's cars, and together with other people cycling. Are THEY prepared for being stranded with a flat?
The sight of someone on the side of the road with a flat tire sends chills up my spine. I imagine scenarios where I've been completely stranded with a flat tire, alone and in remote place, the day growing darker, I'm becoming colder and hungrier. Stranded, with a flat.
In college, I borrowed a friend's Honda and took an incompetent turn straight into a curb. Over the long college graduation weekend, I drove my parents all over town on important outings-- with both back tires low on air, galloping the whole car as if an axle was loose. A few years ago, while mountain biking in the lower Eastern Sierra, a saddle-ride-parking-lot thorn tore a huge hole in my front tire, botching the entire outing and very nearly our return trip to camp.
So on this Friday night, as I wait in the growing dusk outside the parking garage for my gold card-carrying membership of AAA to work, the first 15 minutes go by, then the next half hour, and finally I get a call... that they'd be even longer. As the minute tick by, those stranded road-side scenarios began to form.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a work colleague pulls over to ask if I'm ok... and we end up changing the flat together.
Saved!
On the contrary, that "frumpy, thumpity-thump" is not at all funny. The most extreme trigger for Klatarismenophobia could be the feeling of loss and helplessness with a flat tire by the highway. Best keep that tow truck service number in your contact list.
Posted by: Isabella Pospisil | October 26, 2011 at 01:17 PM